There are now "Linked Monopolies", which are more or less legal and skirt the monopoly laws.  Use to be companies would have actual price wars to get customers.  When I was young, there use to actually be "gas wars"; gas stations would lower their price everyday to complete with the station on the other corner.

Companies now adays often "link" their prices, that is, they still compete agains each other for a peice of the pie, BUT, they "link" their skyrocketing costs together.  So when the 3 major oil companies (for just one example) all link their rising costs together, near equally (and purposely), there is no where for the consumer to go.  Instead of fighting for a bigger piece of the pie, the companies corral the consumer to make the pie bigger and bigger.  They are not stupid (just gready and diabolical), they'll squeze the public until there is some outcry; lower their prices a bit (taking them from outragous to just overpriced), juuuuuuuust until you get use to it, then up the price goes again (coincidentally, by the same ammount from all companies selling the good/service).

It's just like if the only place you could buy a watch, was from the 3 different guys on street corners from the inside of their coats.  You get to choose; choose who to get screwed by is all. . .

Incorrect.

Gas stations rarely do better than break even on gas sales.  The best they're aiming for is to pay for the cashier off the income from the fuel.  They make their money off the convenience items inside.  Didn't you notice when they knocked all the standard gas stations out of the competition?  They all have close to the same price because they just can't get any lower.  This becomes obvious in places that live next to tribal lands or state borders where a change in tax leads to two gas stations having large price differences in relatively close areas.  You can't hardly find a gas station bordering the Choctaw lands around here, they're almost always several cents lower.

The petroleum itself is sold on the open market at auction.  All paranoid conspiracy theories regarding the major oil companies are nonsense, OPEC runs the show, even Exxon has no control over the price of oil.  They could shut down operations entirely and barely make a dent in the supply.

Incorrect.

The countries involved in OPEC aren't even major trading partners to the USA. We buy from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudia Arabia then there is Russia, also not a member of OPEC... OPEC is way down the list and that cartel isn't even that affective. They constantly break their own agreements. As for gas stations. Yeah it's pretty odd that two gas stations next to each other 99% of the time offer gas at the same price. If you go down the stree two more gas stations sell their gas for different price but are the exact same too. I don't think they are linked though. I think one lowers it and then they send out a person to change their sign too.

Now back to cable companies and pc gaming.

But saudi arabia and venezuela are (founding) members of the OPEC...

ON TOPIC: we had these kind of pricings for ages in europe. now it seems like you can get flatrates for 25-30€ from every provider.

My Point? as soon as they can adapt their infrastructure flatrates should return. they need to catch up with demand.

Oh and i am pretty sure the other cable providers are already paying traffic depended to the cable owners. so probably they will adapt the same pricing policies since time warner is unlikely to put themself out of competition by overpricing.

They're unlikely to switch to that pricing plan in areas where competition exists, especially competition on their own network that isn't going to adapt to the new changes.

Opec controls 40% of the worlds oil supply, and has the cooperation of Russia most of the time in their supply control efforts.  That's half the world supply.  US based companies control a few percent all together.  If you understand how oil is sold, the conclusion is obvious.  This is reality, trying to pretend otherwise requires ignorance.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee would not approve of this bullshit one bit, I'll jump to Verizon if I have to, the 1 year cheap internet contract ran out anyway

In a truely free market monopolies are not a problem.  Unfortunately, we haven't seen anything close to a real free market since before the Great Depression in the United States.  Currently, due to massive government regulations on everything and high taxes the barrier to entry into most markets is prohibitively high.

Shh!  You'll attract the attention of the socialists!

That's like saying "You'll attract air.".  The socialists are all around us all the time now.  You can't escape them.

First, plenty of information about this issue at StopTheCap.com

Now some information about me and my situation:

I live on the edge of the suburbs east of Rochester, where they plan on doing this cap stuff. I'm paying about $45/mo for Time Warner internet, and according to the speedtest site Frogboy used, I'm getting just under 2Mbps down and 0.3 Mbps up. The advertised rate is 10Mbps, but it's very unusual to see even half that.

Unfortunately, the only other alternative to Time Warner is dialup. Verizon is building Fios networks out from Buffalo (80 miles west) and Syracuse (70 miles east), but Rochester is served by a smaller phone company named Frontier. They provide DSL service to most of the area, but they tried unsuccessfully to impose a 5GB cap on everyone last year, and I live just outside their service area so I couldn't sign up with them anyway. I actually get my phone service from Verizon, but given the amount of open farmland between me and Syracuse, I'm not getting my hopes up for a Fios rollout here.

Regarding bandwidth usage, my router logs say that the four people in my house used a combined 50GB last month. Two of them don't do much online except websurf and trade photos with friends and other family members. The other is a teenager who plays games and watches a lot of online video, and likes to download game demos on his 360. As for myself, I own several games that get patched frequently, some of them on Impulse. I also have an eMusic subscription, and I occasionally watch videos online or download Creative Commons works from LegalTorrents.com.

Now then,

One thing I would like to point out is that Time Warner already has a tiered pricing model in place, similar to the one Frogboy suggested. I have their standard service, which advertises an optimistic 10Mbps for $45/mo. There is a "Light" tier for about half the price but with a slower speed (I think 7Mbps?), and a "Turbo" tier that gives 15Mbps for $55/mo. Most people who use a lot of bandwidth are going to want the faster tier, so they're already paying more than Granny Email, who should be on the cheapest plan.

When the caps go into effect, people on the Light plan get stuck with 5GB/mo, while the Standard plan gets 20GB and Turbo users get 40GB. The speeds stay the same, so they're effectively downgrading everyone's service. Suspiciously, they're not doing it in any areas where they have actual competition.

There's so much I could say on this subject that I'm just going to stop now before this rant gets any longer. Needless to say, I am not happy.

On the plus side, after they're selling something they actually have, you'll really have a 10mbit connection without needing to stay up till 3am to see it.  Their problem is staring you in the face.  They've sold you a connection they can't give you.

Considering your posting time and location, I'll venture a guess that they are oversold at least ten to one.

It is reasonable to put a cap somewhere, but the present plan is intended to squeeze ordinary subscribers by the throat until they choke. Congress needs to legislate.

What's staring me in the face is the potential 50% rate increase when I'm forced into a higher plan with outrageous overage fees. We're talking about a company that raises its rates every year, and whose only serious competition provides an inferior service. I'm sure they could upgrade the network if they wanted to. Their problem isn't bandwidth, it's a lack of motivation combined with a serious conflict of interest.

They've got the best service in the area, so there's no incentive to make it better. They provide content in addition to the network it's carried on, so naturally they want to make sure their content works best. What we need is more competition, and separation between content providers and network providers.

What that city needs to do is break the back of the Time Warner monopoly and give the city's cable contract to Grande Communications. Win-win.

Psst. We don't get much oil from OPEC members compared to non-open members, those two are one of the few we do get it from and OPEC doesnt' control as much as you think. It has influence but they don't stick to their own agreements. Members make backroom deals ALL the time. Boy does the media like playing them up though, apparently its working.

As for truly free market places don't create monopolies? Are youkidding. How do you think some not so scarce resources became artificially scarce. Monopolies existed long, long before the great depression during the ancient era. History is full of examples of olive presses, salt, telephone companies, railroad owners... business naturally shifts towards a monopolistic position so they can control the market.

On Topic:

They try to sell me a higher speed everytime they call to solicite me for more money, i mean more services. They can barely provide the speeds they already sell me.